"Ah, but l was so much older then, I'm younger than that now" (Bob Dylan). Strange boding, but that could be each of us reflecting on " The Way We Were" back in 1960--"Before we left these portals, to meet less fortunate mortals" (Cole Porter)--and how we look now as we close in on our 45th Reunion this June. More later ...

The photo's taken in Columbia, SC on the 17th of October, 2004, when Miles and Charlotte Kaspar of Fullerton, CA stopped for a few days with Tom and Carole Seebode of Hopkins, SC and Bill and Irma Jeanne Currier of Gilbert, SC. Tom and Bill served in the ANG together, and Bill and Miles were roommates.

I first read about it in the airline magazine on a plane as Karen and I were flying to California, again in USA Today, then Time (Sept. 20, 2004), and in the Smithsonian Magazine (September 2004), Newsweek, the Denver Post, and others--every tabloid I picked up featured a story on Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. Then, as if serendipity had struck, Jean Walbridge e-mailed me about the trip she and husband James Walter Clark, Jr. of Ft. Worth, TX, were on for the museum's opening the 2111 of September. "Jim and I are having a fantastic time in Washington, DC," wrote Jean. "We're staying with Jim's daughter Rachel who is an attorney for one of those huge Washing­ton law firms, Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher. Spending our days at the Museum of the American Indian going to opening activities, seeing Indians in native costumes, dances, etc. The rest of our trip will be spent at Jim's son's house in Esopus, NY we're also going to the TCU-Army game at West Point."

And now, back to those fleet-footed fellows--The Boys from Iowa--our youthful stalwarts who heeded Horace Greeley's advice to go west. Bottom of the 6th, George Emerson Elsea at bat: "I confess to being a part-time Iowan. While my father worked in his civilian job with the Soil Conservation Service, I lived in Iowa. When my father was on active duty with the Army Corps of Engineers, I lived in Virginia, Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina, Guam, and Washington--some of them more than once. I was in Iowa ages 0-3 (born in Shenandoah, went to Red Oak), 8-11 (Clarion), and 16-18 in Sioux City, gradu­ating from Central High--Doug Rekenthaler attended Sioux City East and graduated a year earlier. Doug and I traveled together to Offutt AFB where we took the tests for the Academy; that's also where I met Don Wolfswinkel (he and Doug were college guys, and pretty impressive). I also traveled on the train to Denver in July 1956.

“One of the highlights of pilot training at Williams was looking for lost gold caches in the mountains and a cave in Arizona with Rekenthaler, Brush and Love. We didn't find gold, but I still keep an eye out. In 1963, Mike Love and two others stationed at RAF Lakenheath and I bought a de Havilland Tiger Moth, a '30s-and-'40s-era open-cockpit-biplane trainer. While flying it around the UK on leave, I was weathered in at Inverness, Scot­land, where I met my future wife, Evelyn. Some three years later Mike Love and Mike Hyde traveled to Inverness with our boss, Chief of Wing Stan Eval, and their wives to attend the wedding. I booked them into a hotel--no booze--in Edinburgh on their way north. I suspect it was Mike Hyde who took revenge for the booking into a Temperance hotel by flinging the ignition rotor from our honeymoon car into the River Ness.

"Mike Love and I bought out the shares in the airplane from the others as they rotated from Lakenheath. We enjoyed getting it back to the U.S., reas­sembled and flown, after our tours in Vietnam. Mike's sons learned to fly in the airplane and I'm still flying it a couple of times a month, maintaining currency just in case I'm recalled by the Air Force.

"The Air Force Cold War career went by fast, with four years of nuclear alert, two years of live fire in SEA, flying two years of air defense in Europe, a couple of years of glider instruction at the Academy, and a bunch of assorted desk type work. After retiring from active duty I consulted for a short time for the House Appropriations Committee while looking for honest work. Electronic Data Systems Corporation (EDS) hired me to do assorted deskwork in the D.C. area. One of the highlights of that assignment was the fellowship with the other Class-of-'60 folks--our daughter is still amazed by a party we hosted: all 34 guests arrived at our house within three minutes of the 1900 start time!

"After l retired from EDS, Evelyn and I took stock. We were in Virginia, daugh­ter Merran's family was in Seattle (she and her husband graduated from Radford University in Virginia, and both work for Microsoft: children--Duncan, 4; Fiona, 2; and our son Roy, who lives in Texas, graduated from Texas Tech and is an Elementary School Teacher, has two sons: Alexander, 7; Hunter, 5. Her parents were in Scotland and mine in Arizona. Evelyn found a conveniently-located fixer-upper house at the same time our first grandchild appeared in Texas; it's a stone structure located in Scotland, 100+ years old, originally quartered the farm workers on an estate. So, our retirement scheme is to live the cooler part of the year in Texas (two grandsons) and the warmer part of the year in the Scottish Highlands. And Seattle is always fun to visit (one grandson, one grand­daughter). No shoveling Iowa snow." Bottom of the 8th ...

Some guys are pretty smart. And, like the 'Energizer Bunny,' just keep tickin'. Fred Porter's BOTH, and since last fall has been teaching Aeronautics full time at the Academy (He taught there 25 years ago--'76 to'80--and Mary Lou said the cadets then thought he was 'really old.' I wonder what they call him now?) Fred also teaches several classes a year at NASA Dryden in California, and continues teaching a Computer Science class at Colorado Tech. On a trip back to California, a NASA student took both Porters to Edwards (where Fred was assigned from '67 to '71, and '73 to '75) for a glimpse of the X-43 Scramjet: "It's 12ft long with 4ft span, black, perched on the nose of a Pegasus rocket; the combo launched from the B-52 mother ship. The Pegasus got it to Mach 6, the X-43's engine lit off, and the ship accelerated to Mach 10. It's an air-breathing engine, so it has to fly low, 110,000 feet or so. The significant achievement was super­sonic combustion, something we have never done before in an air-breathing engine. Ten miles away at Mojave, we saw Space Ship One flying its second flight. Solid rocket engine using Nitrous Oxide gas for the oxidizer throttled by the pilot." [R: I asked Fred to explain "Weight Specific Excess Power." On his 'quick' answer of 300+ words, I was doing OK, right up to "WSEP is ... "]

(We interrupt this Op-Ed for an important Public Service Announcement from our 5ponsor: All of our classmates are urged to vote in the upcoming AOG Board election. And check out the new AOG site at www.Usafa.org. We now return to our regular programming.)

45th Reunion. Circle your wagons and your calendars for 14-19 June 2005. Don't be one of the 'booboisie' by not attending--right now, we need a count of those coming; so, HONK if you'll be there. (Warning: Bin Laden crawled out of his rat hole last week to say that our reunion might be targeted, what with our incredible Brain Trust being there; so, I've raised the alert level from Fuch­sia to Pink.) Ouestions? Contact Class President Andi Biancur at 2Biancurs@Adelphia.net. Tell him you've got the moxie and the moolah for that "Little Slice of Heaven" when we celebrate 45 years of bliss since graduating. Remember: There ain't no "Do-Over" if you don't make it to this Reunion ... so give me a HONK! Hallelujah.

Final Roll Call. Denis Walsh's wife, Elizabeth, died Feb 8, 2005 from leukemia.